“These all died in faith, not having received the promises.”  Did they receive nothing?  Moses and Elijah, Gideon and Barak gained power and heroism greater than we can conceive of.  Surely that was enough.  But they did not get the whole of the promise, or even the best of it.  And the simple reason was that God cannot make a promise small enough to be completely fulfilled to a man in his earthly life.  He gets enough to make him a king, but this does not begin to exhaust the promise.  It is inexhaustible.  This is the experience of anyone who will faithfully try it.  And this experience is the grandest argument for immortality.

Therefore, “giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue ([Greek:  arete], strength), and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance ([Greek:  enkrateia], self-control), and to temperance patience ([Greek:  hypomene], endurance), and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity” (love).

And what of prayer?  How can it be answered in a universe of law?  We certainly could have no confidence that our prayers could or would be answered if ours were not a universe of law.  God’s laws are, as we have seen, his modes of working out his great plan.  And the last and highest unfolding of God’s plan is the development of man.  And man is to become conformed to his environment, and conformity of man’s highest powers to his environment is likeness to God.

The laws of nature, then, are in ultimate analysis and highest aim the different steps in God’s plan of man’s salvation from the disease of sin, not merely or mainly from its consequences, and his attainment of holiness.  For this is the only true and sound manhood.  Salvation is spiritual health, resulting also in health of body and of mind.  If God’s laws are his modes of carrying out his plan for godlikeness in man, then they are so thought out as to be the means of helping me to every real good.

The Bible declares explicitly that the aim of prayer is not to inform God of our needs.  For he knows them already.  It is not to change God’s purpose, for he is unchangeable, and we should rejoice in this.  We are to pray for our daily bread; we are to pray for the sick; and, if best for them and consistent with God’s plan, they shall recover.  Elijah prayed for drought and prayed for rain, and was answered.  And Abraham’s prayer would have saved Sodom, had there been ten righteous men in the city.  “Men ought alway to pray and not to faint.”

                     “More things are wrought by prayer
        Than this world dreams of.  Wherefore let thy voice
        Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
        For what are men better than sheep or goats
        That nourish a blind life within the brain,
        If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
        Both for themselves and those who call them friend? 
        For so the whole round earth is every way
        Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”